Hansard

It gives me great pleasure this afternoon to come to the chamber to introduce the Disabled Persons’ Parking Badges (Scotland) Bill, which is more commonly known as the blue badges bill.

The bill is designed to strengthen some of the enforcement aspects of the current legislation and to ensure that there is a statutory review in order to ensure that people who are entitled to a blue badge receive one and that people who are using one are legitimately entitled to it.

The badge provides on-street concessions within local authority parking zones and there is sometimes a degree of contention about blue badge spaces. The bill is not concerned with the spaces, however; it deals with how the badge is used and how to tackle its misuse.

I thank the Local Government and Regeneration Committee, which is the lead committee for the bill. I also thank the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee and the Finance Committee for their submissions to the Local Government and Regeneration Committee. My thanks also go to the Minister for Transport and Veterans for the support that he gave me in the early stages and to the Government for being supportive of the bill. However, I certainly would not have been able to make progress with the bill without the support of the team from Transport Scotland, which has been excellent in taking me through the process of the bill and providing me with the appropriate guidance.

The Transport Scotland team was also responsible, along with myself, for setting up two review groups. It is important to emphasise that those groups have been influential in shaping the bill. They continue to be involved in the process, and I thank their members for the degree of commitment that they bring to their work, the time that they spend on it and their consideration of the guidance that will underpin the bill.

The bill has six sections. Section 1 concerns the design of the badge. Since it was first introduced, the badge has undergone many changes. To begin with, it was an orange badge, and I remember when that scheme was brought in under section 21 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970. Section 1 of the bill sets out how the badge will be improved so that it cannot be copied. The current badge can be and is tampered with to alter the expiry date and so on or to remove photographs. People can take a legitimate badge from someone and use it for their own purposes. I will return to that later.

Section 2 will give a local authority the power to cancel a badge that has been reported as lost or stolen. At the moment, that is seldom centrally registered. The blue badge is issued by a central authority in England, the blue badge improvement service, which holds a record of every blue badge issued in Scotland, England and Wales. With each badge comes a unique number for the badge holder so that when a badge is lost or stolen it can be reported and a new badge issued, with a new identification number. That ensures that any badge issued by the BBIS is legitimate and fit for purpose.

The issue of confiscation has caused a little debate among some organisations and members have been approached by Inclusion Scotland and the Law Society of Scotland. I want to reassure members that a badge would be confiscated only if it was felt that there was justification to do so. In most cases, an examination of the badge by an enforcement officer would probably determine whether that badge had been tampered with, was legitimate or was the badge of the person in the vehicle at the time. If the badge did not belong to the person in the vehicle, the enforcement officer would want to know where the badge holder was. We hear many stories: the person whose badge it is has just nipped into a shop and will be back in five minutes; or there has been a mistake and the badge should have been removed, because the driver was just nipping to the shops on an errand for a person with a disability and forgot that the badge was there. We hear many, many excuses.

Confiscation will be carried out sensitively. There is no point in confiscating a badge from a person who has a legitimate right to it. The badge is not just about on-street parking; it is about empowering people to get out and about. It enables people to get out of their homes and pursue leisure or employment, go shopping or visit family. It has an enabling function. At the moment, though, we are aware that it is being misused and abused.

There are some questions around the evidence from Glasgow City Council and the City of Edinburgh Council. The Law Society and Inclusion Scotland have asked for that evidence to be substantiated. I say to both groups that if a blue badge is being used by someone other than the badge holder, that person is denying someone else that disabled parking space. On-street parking can be difficult, especially in town centres.

The measures in the bill are appropriate and proportionate. I am grateful to the Local Government and Regeneration Committee for taking evidence and explaining to the Law Society of Scotland and Inclusion Scotland what it felt were the appropriate measures.

When we gave evidence to the committee at stage 1, the minister and I were questioned on those aspects and I think that we gave the appropriate answers to provide some degree of reassurance—if not total reassurance—to the Law Society of Scotland and Inclusion Scotland.

The other element of the bill that we are looking at is about non-uniformed officers. Again, that relates to the enforcement aspect of the blue badge scheme. Sometimes, what we need is the evidence, as has been called for. We need to ensure that badges are not being misused. At the moment, the intelligence from Glasgow and Edinburgh is that enforcement officers can go out, investigate, take evidence and then maybe make the appropriate approach—again, they could advise the police.

The final aspect of the bill is the review process, which is extremely important. In 2012, we introduced the independent mobility assessment, which lays down the criteria for a person to be given a badge. The measures are there. At the moment, there is no review process in some local authorities, but I am delighted to say that since we started moving forward with the bill, the majority of local authorities have put a review process in place.

I look forward to the debate and I hope that, at the end of it, the bill will be able to move on to the next stage.

I move,

That the Parliament agrees to the general principles of the Disabled Persons’ Parking Badges (Scotland) Bill.